• The Sound Lair control room
    Your ally in realizing your music production goals.
    Your music, my mission
    Miah Lajeunesse

    15+ years experience

    Friendly, creative environment

    Industry-competitive sonic results

    Thousands of musicians served

  • The Sound Lair monitors
    Analog vision with digital precision.
    Making beautiful things out of ones and zeroes

    Pristine signal paths

    Premium outboard signal processors

    Industry-leading plugin collection

    Expert speed of workflow

  • Sound Lair guitar amplifiers
    Equipped with studio-teched instrumentation for your use.
    Ready to rock
    Ibanez Universe
    Gibson Les Paul

    Guitars & basses by Gibson, Ibanez, LTD, Taylor, Traben

    Choice collection of guitar amplification

    Custom maple Huston drumkit & cymbal array

    Massive MIDI-accessible virtual instrument libraries

  • Sound Lair vocal station
    Turnkey audio production services from start to finish.
    Preproduction through mastering
    Neumann U87

    All music genres welcome

    Production assistance

    Online / long-distance services

    Prompt turnaround

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THE SOUND LAIR: A professional recording studio & audio production facility

MiAH LAJEUNESSE: Owner / producer / composer / sound & mix engineer



Versatile and complete production capabilities



Bio

The Sound Lair The Sound Lair is a professional digital audio recording studio located in West Knoxville, Tennessee, owned and operated by freelance producer / engineer Miah Lajeunesse. Founded in January of 2006, The Sound Lair has grown into its present form as a well-equipped, highly versatile production facility willing to produce nearly any genre of music. The studio has served the production needs of hundreds of bands and solo artists from all over the United States and Europe, completed productions for numerous record labels, and has made recordings that launched and sustained the professional music careers of many musicians.

The Sound Lair is comprised of a control room and a tracking room almost equal in size. The control room seats 5 artists plus engineer and is laid out in a command-center, cockpit-like configuration. The room's centerpiece is its Toft ATB-series 32-channel analog console and its enormous floating array of LCD displays, flanked by a pair of Adam Audio nearfield monitors. Racks of effects and dynamics processors glow near the studio's enviable arsenal of guitar amplifiers. Spanning the walls of the room are hangers of assorted acoustic and electric guitars and electric basses.

Ascend a flight of stairs to arrive in the tracking room. This room's layout can be configured numerous ways depending upon the signal source to be recorded, whether drums, percussion, acoustic instruments, woodwinds or brass. A remote display LCD monitor on an adjustable stand permits a performer to see the realtime track view of a live session (immensely useful to vocalists), which can also be used to display lyrics from the control room for visual feedback.

The Sound Lair's placement in Knoxville, TN makes it geographically central in the eastern US and reachable from many states within a day's drive. The studio's suburban setting means that for its visiting recording artists, there are many dining, lodging, and recreational amenities in the immediate area, as well as the attractions of downtown Knoxville, Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, and the Great Smoky Mountains national park.

Miah Lajeunesse Greetings... I am MiAH, the singular mind and force behind The Sound Lair. I discovered a passion for recording music in late 1997, devouring all the print and online information I could find to increase my knowledge on the subject while applying it to making my own recordings. For several years I recorded demos for my own bands and friends' local bands, honing my autodidactic skills at PC-based sound production. In January 2006 I resigned from the corporate workplace to launch The Sound Lair.

I quickly established The Sound Lair within its first couple of years by making the recordings that launched the careers of bands like Whitechapel, Aegaeon, Straight Line Stitch, and A Plea For Purging. I partnered with record labels all over the country, recording bands on their rosters while producing the music of hundreds of independent bands and solo artists via connections made when Myspace enjoyed the height of its popularity. The Sound Lair steadily grew into a highly reputable and regionally-recognized production facility. In coming years I will architect and construct a new Sound Lair to be relocated to picturesque acreage I own on the highest mountain peak in Rockford, TN, where I will fulfill a lifelong goal of offering vastly-expanded studio facilities in an environment that will feel like a resort retreat to even better serve my growing national clientele.

My production objectives center on capturing your musical intent and expression, then sculpting it into a clear form to represent you and your band so that you can share it with the world. My qualifications to do this are my deep understanding of music theory, my two-decade musical background of playing guitar and bass, a real-world-acquired knowledge of applied recording methods, fluency in modern recording and sound design techniques, and tens of thousands of hours of experience operating all aspects of my own studio built from the ground up. My own musical taste spans many genres, and therefore I've acquired an ambidextrous and well-rounded method of production by undertaking involvement in recording and mixing a wide variety of music genres. The Sound Lair is equipped with the gear and the ears to help you realize your sound, and I give attention to every single artist's production I untertake with the same level of detail and interest that I give to my own music. I welcome the opportunity to document your art and look forward to giving you a superlative production experience.

Make contact

Use the contact form to send a production inquiry message to MiAH of The Sound Lair. I can answer any questions you may have regarding your production goals, the recording process, scheduling, pricing, and more.

Please include such thorough details as: type of music / instrumentation, quantity of songs and lengths, number of musicians involved and the level of their recording experience, special wishes for your production, what budget you're working with, when you might like to record, and more so that I can respond with an informative reply. I'll reply within 24 hours or sooner, depending upon my production schedule.


Please note: The Sound Lair does not offer internships / employment. Please do not use this form to solicit these as such inquiry is answered here: no such positions are available.



  • Location: Maryville, TN, USA

  • Email: soundlair@gmail.com

  • Telephone: +1 (865) 566-LAIR (5247)
            Call 1PM - 1AM, 7/365, text anytime

Production Inquiry



Studio Images

    Command center
    Effects processors
    Custom Huston drumkit
    Guitar collection
    Amplifier arsenal
    Vocal station
    Mixing session
    Control room panorama
    Avalon preamplification
    Bass guitars
    Guitar & bass cabinets
    Session-ready drumkit

Studio Inventory

CONSOLE
   Presonus StudioLive 64S digital console
   Mackie Control DAW control surface
   Hear Technologies Hearback monitor system

MONITORING
   Adam AX77 monitors with Mogami interconnects
   Adam 15S subwoofer
   Mackie Big Knob
   Directsound EX-29 headphones

INTERFACE
   Preonus StudioLive 64S

D.A.W. PC SPECS
   Asus Rampage VI Extreme motherboard
   Intel 18-core 3.5Ghz i9 CPU
   128GB G.Skill RAM
   NVidia 4GB GPU RAM
   (1) Samsung 70" 4K (UHD) LCD display
   (2) Samsung 55" 4K (UHD) LCD displays
   Windows 10 Professional 64-bit
   16 TB of Seagate hard drive storage
   Asus BW-16D1HT BluRay burner
   Samsung 43" 4K (UHD) remote LCD display
   Universal Audio UAD-2 Octo Custom DSP accelerator
   Belkin uninterruptable power supply system
   Monster Power AVS 2000 power conditioner


SOFTWARE
   Steinberg Nuendo 11, 6
   Magix Sound Forge 14
   Plugins: UA, Antares, Waves Complete, PSP, NI, Brainworx; more
   VSTi: NI, IK Multimedia, Spectrasonics, more

OUTBOARD DYNAMICS PROCESSING
   (2) Avalon VT 737-SP

OUTBOARD EFFECTS PROCESSING
   Eventide Eclipse 4.01
   Line6 Echo Pro
   Line6 Mod Pro
   Line6 Filter Pro
   Alesis Wedge
   Alesis Air FX

MICROPHONES
   Neumann U87 ai Set-Z
   (2) AKG C 414 B-XLS ST (stereo matched pair)
   (2) AKG C 451 B ST (stereo matched pair)
   (2) Apex 210 ribbon mics
   AKG C-3000B
   AKG D-112
   Shure Beta 58
   Shure Beta 52
   Shure BG 4.1
   (2) Shure SM 58
   (7) Shure SM 57
   Yamaha SKRM-100 SubKick

STRINGED INSTRUMENTS
   Gibson Les Paul 2008 Traditional (Bareknuckle Nailbomb bridge pickup)
   Gibson Les Paul Studio Plus
   Ibanez 1998 Universe (drop A tuning, Dimarzio Drop Sonic bridge pickup)
   Ibanez RG-7620 7-string (drop A tuning, Dimarzio X2N bridge pickup)
   LTD Eclipse EC-1000
   LTD Deluxe M-1000
   Taylor 910CE acoustic
   1965 Frederico Garcia classical guitar
   Ibanez SR-405 5-string bass
   Ibanez SR-500 4-string bass

GUITAR AMPLIFICATION
   Splawn Pro Mod
   Mesa 4x12 angled tall cabinet
   Carvin 4x12 straight cabinet


BASS AMPLIFICATION
   Ampeg SVT-3 Pro
   Ampeg 4x10 HLF cabinet
   Tech21 Sansamp RBI


GUITAR RECORDING
   Kemper KPA rackmount profiler
   Vox Satchurator overdrive pedal
   Boss NS-2 noise suppressor pedal


SOUND MODULES / MIDI GEAR
   Roland FP-60X digital piano / controller
   M-Audio Oxygen-8 software synth controller

DRUMS
   Huston Drums custom drumkit consisting of:
   Huston 22" x 20" 8-ply maple kick drum
   Tama Iron Cobra double-foot pedal
   Pacifica 14" x 6" unvented birch snare
   Huston 14" x 6 ½" 20-ply vented maple snare
   Huston 13" x 3 ½" 10-ply piccolo maple snare
   Huston 10" rack tom
   Huston 12" rack tom
   Huston 13" rack tom
   Huston 14" floor tom
   Huston 16" floor tom
      (Kit is skinned with Evans EC2 heads)

CYMBALS / PERCUSSION
   Paiste Signature Sound Edge 14" hi-hats
   Zildjian A-custom 14" hi hats
   Zildjian A-custom 15" crash
   Zildjian A-custom 16" crash
   Zildjian A-custom 17" projection crash
   Zildjian Z-custom 18" heavy rock crash
   Paiste 18" prototype rock crash
   Paiste 20" prototype heavy crash
   Paiste 20" 2002 ride
   Paiste 21" dry wild ride
   Zildjian 22" earth ride
   Sabian 19" AAX metal china
   Wuhan 12" fast china
   Paiste 2000 Sound Reflections 12" splash
   Paiste Prototype H2H 10" splash
   Paiste Prototype T20 6" splash
   Zildjian 6" zil-bel
   Various percussion (tambourine, eggshaker, etc)

Recording Clientele

Listed below is a mostly-comprehensive catalog of record labels and recording artists whose productions were partially shaped or fully created here, and The Sound Lair's production involvement specific to each release is indicated by these stages:

Tracking / engineering

Mixing

Mastering / post-production